


cosmogony

by table_matters



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Homesickness, Language Barrier, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 02:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18306104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/table_matters/pseuds/table_matters
Summary: "It’s been five years now, living here, and I’m still feeling… strange."





	cosmogony

With Sendai’s electrical grid disconnected the night sky had glittered, stars a million wide and a thousand deep. Yuzuru spent most of his nights awake and looking up, back then – better the stars than the mud and ruin at his feet, the stuffy despair of the shelter, the helpless gnawing hunger.

His blades were ruined and he had left his trainers in the rubble of the rink, so someone from the Red Cross had found him a pair of slippers – he had even considered unmounting the blades so he could at least wear his boots, but no one had any tools. There was a tense undercurrent of silence in the air, like after an explosion or a fight: they all waited grimly for the other shoe to drop, and everyone struggled to sleep. So Yuzuru would creep up to the roof (of the shelter, first, and then of their pockmarked and listing house) and look at the stars. 

Later, he will tell his costumers about those skies, and together they try to capture them: shimmering pinpricks of light to calm and beguile and distract. He doesn’t know their names, but he can map them out with utter clarity.

In Toronto, of course, even they are different.

::::::::::::::::::: 

_August 2012_

His success rate on the sal is still below twenty percent. He’s been here two months and he’s still not landing it any more consistently than when he had that first breakthrough in June, and they won’t let him practice it. Instead he’s subjected to hours of mysterious instructions, half mimed and half repeated slowly (as if that helps), stroking exercises and turns and corrections he doesn’t understand, hours of Tracy sighing and stepping out onto the ice to demonstrate while Yuzuru tries to figure out what he’s done wrong. 

He knows he gets on David’s nerves, and that his mother misses home. The travel back and forth for school is endless and draining, his grades are dropping, and he doesn’t think he’s had an actual conversation with anyone in weeks, except maybe the documentary people. Even when he’s back home he feels like a ghost: at school the inside jokes fly over his head, and so many of his rinkmates quit skating after the earthquake, chose to focus on the things that matter.

His time with his mother too is increasingly silent, both of them wading through a morass of jetlag and homesickness. Of doubt.

But the worst is watching Brian grow more and more frustrated. Yuzuru knows they talk about him: they do it when he’s barely out of earshot, something about quads and the federation and his mother and his English and much more that he can’t make head or tail of, and the thing is it’s never been like this, he’s never felt so outside himself, so adrift. Usually he knows exactly what to do. Now he feels like a universe, like at some point he broke into pieces that are still moving further and further apart. He has a year and six months left. The thought of it is enough to make sweat prickle at his armpits. 

::::::::::::

That night, he stays back after the club officially closes and creeps back in. The zamboni won’t come out till later, and there’s still enough daylight that he can skate without turning on the overheads and giving himself away. He should call his mother and make some kind of excuse, but he’s so tangled in his own head he can barely see past the tip of his skates.

The sal just isn’t coming. It can’t, not when he’s this far outside his own body, relying on muscle memory that is made up almost entirely of unsuccessful attempts. The first is so rushed he has to single it; the second sends him leaning too far over his toe pick, and he crashes knee first into the ice. 

Then the falls begin in earnest. It barely feels real anyway: crawl back up, crossover, crossover, crossover, launch – thighs burning, soaked with sweat – timing off, axis off, reacting too slowly – and then smacking back down hard on his ass, his hip, his side. Again. Another. Another. After a while the cold and the rhythmic, stinging pain begin to hollow out a kind of calm under his ribs. 

Then his ankle goes over with a crunch, and his back hits the ice so hard it punches all the air out of him. He lies there, stunned, chest spasming. This time he doesn’t get up.

Gradually, the aches filter back into consciousness. Most won’t amount to more than bruises and he miraculously hasn’t concussed himself, but his ankle is throbbing, deep and insistent. It could be a sprain. It could be worse than a sprain. If all this – this _tantrum_ was good for was damaging him, his chances, he – 

He stares at the ceiling, throat tight and still panting, willing the rafters to turn into a more familiar white. They don’t, so he closes his eyes. Time is running out, and he doesn’t know what to do. 

And then Javi is hovering over him, worried grip tight on Yuzu’s shoulder, saying something Yuzu can’t even understand the gist of, _again_ , and he just. The tears rise in a sudden, humiliating rush, and he ends up pushing himself up onto his knees so he can at least try to dash them away. 

Javi says something else, something about whether he’s hurt, probably, and when Yuzuru just shakes his head Javi drops out of his crouch so he can pull him closer – and Yuzuru, shameless, goes, pressing his forehead into Javi’s shoulder. 

They stay like that for a while, Yuzuru’s hands clawed into his thighs as he fights for breath. As he fights for – _fuck_. 

“Javi,” he wheezes, the whine already beginning to creep into each inhale, “My – my kyuunyuuki,” but he can’t find the word in English so he has to mime it instead. 

“Where?” Javi asks shortly, already pulling away to dash back to the boards, and Yuzuru has to resist the urge to reach after him, to panic. It’s been a while since he’s had an attack that wasn’t caused by a skate – this one crept up on him. 

“Bag,” he bites out, and tries to do his breathing exercises as he waits (and waits) for Javi to return, listening to the familiar whistle of his slowly closing airways. And then Javi is back, pushing the inhaler into Yuzu’s hand and clumsily trying to close his fingers around it, but Yuzu bats him off, and – _finally_.

“Sorry,” Javi says, hovering again, fingers glancing off Yuzu’s shoulder. He says something else, something about “long time”, and then, “Are you okay?”

Yuzu just keeps staring down, too distracted by all his new oxygen to muster an answer. He is going to be in so much trouble tomorrow. He can just picture the way Brian’s lips will go pursed at the corners, the way Tracy will drag him into one of the offices so he can vent (he’s heard them before, those muffled arguments). 

“Javi,” he entreats, blindly reaching out for him. “Please not tell Brian. Please?”

Javi just sighs, carefully pulling Yuzu to his feet. “Off ice first,” he decides. “Then we talk.” 

They don’t go far. Yuzu still feels coltish and unsteady, and he lets Javi march him into the nearest office and dump him onto a couch. 

“Stay,” Javi orders, and then disappears again, returning a few seconds later with two cans of cola from the vending machine. “Come on,” he insists, ignoring the face Yuzu pulls, “Caffeine is good, Tracy told me that.”

Now that he’s calmed down a bit Yuzu is keenly aware that his kit is still soaked with sweat and melted ice, and the stupid can of cold soda isn’t exactly helping. 

“Okay?” Javi asks. 

Yuzuru shrugs; he doesn’t have words for any of this anyway. “Cold,” he says instead, and Javi spots an abandoned jacket hanging behind the door and fetches it for him. 

It helps, a bit. Javi plops himself down beside him on the ugly green couch, eyeing him over the rim of his can.

“What happened?” 

Yuzu blinks. He would have thought that was pretty clear. “Quad sal,” he explains. “Very bad.”

Javier rolls his eyes. “That I know,” he says, and then stops, seeming to remember the language barrier. Eventually he puts his can down and presses a hand to his chest, open-palmed. “I mean, are you okay here?”

Yuzuru can feel his treacherous throat close up again so he stops his breath, ignores the sharp hitches in his chest until the feeling goes away. He shakes his head so hard he can feel wind on his clammy cheeks: “I’m okay.”

Javi just looks at him. Javi's always looking at him, it feels like, with his big brown cow eyes and his consideration and his gentleness, as if Yuzu wouldn't step right over him if it meant finally stabilising his quad, or getting through his programme without collapsing, or feeling like coming here had been worth it. As if he shouldn't need to.

“You want to go to Japan?” Javi asks. 

_It’s more that I shouldn’t have left,_ Yuzuru could explain. _Didn’t deserve to, not when no one else could. Not when I’m failing. Over there I could serve a purpose, be that night sky. What can I do here, except watch time slowly running out?_

He does miss Nanami-sensei then, suddenly and violently. 

“Yes,” he whispers. 

Javi huffs and drapes an arm around his shoulder, pulling him in. Yuzuru goes, because he always does.

“I miss home too,” Javi tells him, and Yuzu can feel his breath against the crown of his head. “I know it’s hard.”

He’s still wrestling with this, with how kind Javi is, a bright spot of strength. He came here determined, steeled to face Javi head on and watch him and learn from him and _beat_ him, as soon and as definitively as possible. Instead he is lost in a prickly new world and Javi is the one who speaks to him simple and slow, who guides him with quick warm touches when Yuzuru doesn’t understand, who laughs with him when he falls.

But of course he doesn’t know how to say any of that. “I – not hard with Javi,” is all he can offer. 

Javi sighs, shakes him a little. “But that was dangerous. Don’t do it again.”

“Not dangerous,” Yuzuru answers mulishly, glaring at the ugly ficus in the corner, “In Sendai I do it.”

“No, listen to me,” Javi insists, cupping his cheek to turn his head, and he’s always so insanely _close_. Yuzuru blushes so quickly and so deeply he gets dizzy with it. “Alone is dangerous. If you stay, you tell me, okay? We practice together. Understand?”

“Y-yes,” Yuzuru manages, with a jerky nod that (fortunately) pulls him out of Javi’s grasp. “I understand.”

“OK.” Javi stands and stretches, checking his phone. “I need to go soon. You call home, I’ll wait here till your mother comes.” 

That night Yuzuru spends an hour in the bath, trying to wash his blooming bruises and the feeling of Javi’s hands off his skin. Javi never tells Brian.


End file.
